Lori Lemaris

The lovely brown-haired Atlantean mermaid who, prior to her marriage
to the extraterrestrial merman surgeon Ronal, remains to this day one
of the Man of Steel's most trusted friends. Recalling her wistfully
in May 1959, Clark Kent describes her as the kind of girl he's always
dreamed of marrying - a girl of rare beauty and courage with
eyes as blue and mysterious as the sea and a voiced tinged with the
slightest touch of a foreign accent.

Residing in the subsea realm of Atlantis with her husband Ronal and
her younger sister Lenora, Lori Lemaris is a descendant of Nar
Lemaris, the Atlantean scientist who performed the miraculous
biological conversion that transformed the people of Atlantis into a
population of mer-people (Superman #154, July 1962).

Like all Atlanteans, Lori Lemaris has mastered the art of reading
minds and of communicating telepathically. She can perform these
feats over very long distances, thus enabling her to read Superman's
thoughts or summon him by telepathy even while she is in Atlantis and
he is in Metropolis, a great distance away. It was by reading Clark
Kent's mind that Lori first discovered that Clark Kent is Superman.
Lori Lemaris' extraordinary mental powers also enable her to make sea
creatures obey her telepathic commands or to tune in on the thoughts
of criminals imprisoned in the phantom
zone.

Although Lori Lemaris, like other Atlanteans, is physically capable of
surviving out of water, to remain in perfect health her body must be
immersed in salt water at least ten hours a day. Since walking on
land is impossible for a fish-tailed Atlantean, Lori Lemaris has
customarily employed a wheelchair during her brief sojourns in the
surface world, concealing her mermaid tail beneath a blanket so as not
to arouse undue attention.

Lori Lemaris' status among her fellow Atlanteans is not entirely
certain. Several texts portray her as an ordinary Atlantean citizen.
At least one text, however, describes her as Atlantis' queen
(Superman #156, October 1962) and two others describe her as
Atlantis' ruler (Superman #154, July 1962 and Action
Comics #300, May 1963).

Once every hundred years, according to Superman #129, an
Atlantean is chosen by his people to visit the surface world to learn
of the surface people's progress during the preceeding century. It
was while making one of these visits that Lori Lemaris attended
Metropolis University during the period when Clark Kent was a senior
there. Kent dated her steadily during this period, captivated by her
courage and haunting beauty, falling, day by day, ever more hopelessly
in love with her.

Finally, Kent decided to ask her to marry him, to share with her the
secret of his dual identity, and to abandon his super-heroic role as
Superman forever in order to live out his life with her as plain Clark
Kent. Lori, however, had already divined Clark Kent's secret by means
of her telepathic powers, and although she loved him as much as he did
her, she felt that marriage between a man and a mermaid was impossible
and that her first duty was to return to her people. And so, recalls
Clark Kent years later, "soon, under the sea, we kissed - and
there never was, or ever will be, such a strange kiss again - the
farewell kiss between a Superman and a mermaid!"